


By Grace

by Atalan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aziraphale and Crowley Met Before The Fall (Good Omens), Fluff and Angst, M/M, Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, but mostly fluff tbh, post-Fall amnesia is for cowards, taking a shortcut past 6000 years of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21513250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalan/pseuds/Atalan
Summary: Things that are written can be crossed out, and things that are crossed out can be written all over again, as long as you're willing to put in the work.A tiny little soulmate/soulmark AU.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 87
Kudos: 1249





	By Grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_moonmoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/gifts).



> Look I'm not even that keen on the whole soulmate mark thing and YET.

You're supposed to _know_ , when you meet your soulmate. And Aziraphale _does_ , it's just that it's not what he expected, not a blaring of trumpets or a sudden swell of feeling in his chest or an instant of recognition. The golden mark carved over his heart doesn't burn or glow or sing, and so he almost misses it.

Almost.

(Afterwards, for a little while, he almost wishes he had.)

They meet on a long balcony that runs around one of the towers; they very nearly collide, in fact, because Aziraphale is so busy craning his neck to try and see what's going on down in the courtyard, and the other angel is rushing headlong towards the stairs like he's forgotten he has wings. Aziraphale squawks and tries to sidestep, wings all aflutter in surprise, and the other angel throws out his hands and catches him by the shoulders in time to halt his own momentum, and they stare at each other for a long, shocked second.

Then the other angel laughs. There's tension in his face, his shoulders, his whole being, but he laughs through it, and for a moment it cracks open into something warm and bright.

"Sorry," he says, "that was on me. You okay?"

"No, I—" Aziraphale replies, then self-corrects, "I mean, yes, I'm fine, but no, it was my fault, I wasn't paying enough attention—"

"On both of us then." The other angel lets go of Aziraphale and grins like they're co-conspirators. "No harm done."

He moves past Aziraphale, long steps already picking up the pace again, and Aziraphale almost _almost_ misses it, because if he'd been expecting it at all, he would have expected it at the moment that their eyes met.

But instead, it's there in the widening gap between them, a feeling like a string pulling taut, a feeling like falling, like running out of time.

"Wait!" Aziraphale gasps. "I think— do you—"

He doesn't know what he's intending to say, but he doesn't have to find out, because when the other angel turns back towards him, his hand is pressed to his chest and his eyes are wide and startled. He looks at Aziraphale, really _looks_ at him now, taking him all in, and Aziraphale knows he's doing the same thing, running his eyes over this stranger who he's suddenly certain carries a soulmark to match his own.

"Oh," says the other angel.

Aziraphale wilts a little inside, the beginnings of joy shrinking away as fast as they arrived. He likes what he sees, likes the energy and humour of the other angel, his firebrand hair, his striking eyes, but of course, Aziraphale himself isn't much of a prize, is he? Just a dusty little archivist, before dust has even been invented, unimportant and unassuming. He looks away so he doesn't have to see the disappointment in the other angel's face.

"Ah— well, it's— there's no obligation, is there?" he says, twisting his hands together and wishing he'd never called out. "Just a, a _suggestion_ as I understand it, plenty of people don't... don't act on it—"

He stops, because the other angel is suddenly right in front of him, catching hold of his hands to stop him from knotting them into some improbable configuration. Aziraphale looks up before he can help himself. It's not disappointment on the stranger's face. Nothing like disappointment at all.

"Right," the other angel says, almost breathless, even though they don't breathe. "No obligation. But, uh, what's your name?"

They exchange names. And they look at each other for a few more seconds, and Aziraphale feels something warm creeping into his chest and onto his face.

Then his would-be-soulmate seems to remember himself, releases his hands with a regretful smile.

"I've got to go, I'm already late," he says, rambling through the delight that's painted all over his face. "But look, I'll find you, later on when Lucifer's done with us, I'll come and find you."

Aziraphale starts at the mention of the Archangel, unable to hide his unease.

"Lucifer? You're— one of his?"

The other angel half-laughs, half-scowls, shrugs to cover it up.

"Not a fan?"

"He seems a little... he seems like trouble," Aziraphale admits.

"I'm not _one of his_ ," the other replies, mouth twitching sideways, not quite a smile, not quite a grimace. "But he's not wrong about some things, either. I want to see where he's going with it. No harm in listening, asking a few questions."

Aziraphale wishes, later, that he could say that the words fill him with dread, that he feels the shadow of the future, but the truth is, the reassurance does its work. He relaxes. He smiles tentatively. His would-be-soulmate smiles back.

"I'll see you later, then," Aziraphale says with a little flutter of hope and anticipation he's never felt before. He can feel it, the first fragile thread between them, something that they might weave into tapestry if they choose to walk this path, if they learn to read each other's hearts through the door that has been left open for them.

"I'll show you the stars," the other angel promises with a grin and a wink, and then he's gone, rushing off like a whirlwind, and Aziraphale watches him go with a kind of wondering awe.

He carries that little candle flame of anticipation with him all the way back to the archives. Even when the fighting starts and he has other things to occupy his mind, he keeps that little glow cupped away somewhere, a promise of something on the other side of this nightmare.

It doesn't go out until the moment of the Fall, that awful soul-deep wrench that everyone in Heaven feels as a third of the Host is cast down, and in its wake another, more intimate sense of loss, infinitely weaker, infinitely worse, as his soulmark burns black and that fragile thread snaps like it never existed at all.

* * *

By the time they send him to the Garden, Aziraphale thinks he's come to terms with it. In the grand scheme of things, after all, he got off very lightly. Didn't have time to fall in love, not really, not in that brief moment. Didn't have time to bind themselves together like two stars in mutual orbit. Other angels haven't been so lucky. Some of them may never be the same again.

He reminds himself at least three times a day of how lucky he's been, really, and he aches, and he patrols the wall and does not think about this new thing called Hell and all the horrors he's heard about it and those who dwell there.

He feels it, when something changes, when a weight bends the world into a new configuration; the arrival of evil, the presence of a demon. He calls out to the other angels who guard the walls; to his dismay, they tell him that they have no orders to leave their posts, that it is out of their hands.

Aziraphale has no orders to leave his post either, but he does so anyway, going first to the humans' camp to check on them. They are sleeping peacefully under the stars, no sign of any interference there. He turns away and begins to search through the trees, hunting for anything out of place, anything dangerous.

He finds the demon by one of Eden's clear lakes, sitting on a rock, staring at the water. At first all Aziraphale sees are his wings and one long leg drawn up, a skinny arm wrapped around it. He doesn't look like much of a threat. There's a weary sort of sadness in his posture, at least until he hears Aziraphale approach and stiffens into readiness.

"Come to smite me, have you?" says the demon. "You might as well not bother, they'll just keep sending us up here—"

And he turns, and the words choke off with a sound like someone's grabbed his throat and squeezed, and Aziraphale hears his own desperate gasp of shock, and they stare at each other across the clearing, no sound but the night sounds, no movement but the soft flitting of creatures in the undergrowth.

"It's you," Aziraphale says, hand creeping up to his chest, pressing against the dark, dead mark there, no more than a scabbed-over wound on his skin now, soon to fade into pale scar tissue.

"Oh," says the demon, soft like the first time, but now there's something bitter and lost and painful in it. He's tight and taut, shoulders high and knuckles white. "Hello, Aziraphale."

Aziraphale almost replies with the name he was told before, but he catches himself.

"What should I call you?" he asks instead.

The demon's shoulders relax fractionally, surprise and gratitude flitting briefly across his face.

"Everyone else is calling me Crawly," he says. "Snake, you know."

(Yes, his eyes are serpentine now, yellow like sulphur, pupils a sharp black slash of ink. They suit him, Aziraphale finds himself thinking with surprise and then, with a bit of shame: they suit him better than the way he looked before.)

"Crawly," Aziraphale repeats, and that _doesn't_ suit him, but he's not going to say that, not going to use the name with any less respect than the first name Crawly told him. "What are you doing here?"

Crawly looks away, stares at the dew-damp grass, his shoulders tightening again.

"Causing trouble, of course," he says, so nonchalant it screams the opposite. "That's what demons do, isn't it? And I suppose you're here to thwart me."

Aziraphale hesitates, because he knows Crawly's right, the briefings were very clear on what to do about the Adversary should he find himself in a confrontation, and it did not involve even this much conversation.

But the briefings also told him that the Fallen had become twisted, ugly things, raging beasts filled with mindless hate, that they were no longer the angels they once had been. The briefings said nothing about sorrow, or about the pain and loss in the set of Crawly's mouth.

He approaches Crawly, slow and cautious, careful to keep his hand away from his sword. Crawly watches him with the intense wariness of a creature poised for flight. It makes his chest ache. It makes his mark ache, even though it has no potency left in it.

When he gets to the shore of the pool, he sees why Crawly was staring into it. The sky is reflected perfectly in the still water, laid out like a map of the heavens in a silver mirror.

"You were going to show me the stars," Aziraphale says quietly, his chest aching even more.

Crawly bites his lip, glances between Aziraphale and the water. His hair is still that eye-catching red, his face still full of every emotion that passes through his heart. Aziraphale sees regret and grief and something all too close to the same _longing_ that is thrumming through his own body.

"Still could," Crawly murmurs after a few moments. "If you. If you like?"

Aziraphale has the sense of standing on the edge of something, of a choice, of a path that forks in two very different directions. His soulmark is nothing but a slowly-healing wound on his skin. It has no power any more, cannot spin those threads between them, cannot guide them into understanding each other, cannot teach them to read each other's hearts without even trying. They've no more reason to come together than any two souls who meet by chance, and a great many reasons to part ways now and be enemies henceforth.

Aziraphale takes a step towards the rock Crawly is sitting on. Crawly shifts, makes space for him. Aziraphale sits down, feels the ghost of warmth in the stone.

"I'd like that," he says, and beside him, Crawly breathes in like he's only just worked out what his lungs are for.

"Oh," Crawly says, and this third time, it's full of hope.

* * *

"I didn't expect it to be like this," Crawly mutters as they stand on the wall together, watching the humans set out across the desert. Aziraphale knows he isn't just talking about the apple. "I don't understand what's so bad about knowledge. I don't understand what's wrong with asking questions."

Aziraphale doesn't have an answer for him, at least not one he dares utter out loud, so he reaches for his hand instead.

"Did we do the right thing, do you think?" he asks.

"Better hope not," Crowley says with a grimace, even as he laces his fingers tightly with Aziraphale's. "I could get in a lot of trouble for doing the right thing."

"Did we do what we were supposed to do, then?"

"I don't know," Crawly admits.

The first drops of the first rain begin to fall. Crawly twitches; he's serpent enough to detest the cold and wet. Aziraphale raises a wing to cover him, and Crawly ducks in closer, close enough to lean their heads lightly together as they stare out over the desert, hands still tightly clasped.

"We could follow them," Crawly says. "You know. Keep an eye out. See if we did the right— the things we were supposed to do. Fix it if we didn't."

"Is that your evil plan?" Aziraphale asks lightly. "To follow them with ill intent?"

"No, of course— _oh_." Crawly huffs a laugh of delighted comprehension. "Yeah, that's absolutely it, angel. _So_ much ill intent. More ill intent than you can shake a stick at. Probably take years to intend it all, centuries even."

He lets go of Aziraphale's hand to wrap an arm around his waist, rests his chin on Aziraphale's shoulder. His breath is warm on Aziraphale's cheek.

"Be a shame if someone was around to thwart me, wouldn't it?"

**Author's Note:**

> _"You [had] it by grace... and you can regain it by work. [...] Grace attained like that is deeper and fuller than grace that comes freely, and furthermore, once you've gained it, it will never leave you."_
> 
> \- The Amber Spyglass, Phillip Pullman


End file.
